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Hi pgbovine. Thanks for your post and thanks for your visit here to the discussion. I sure wish more authors would engage us like you are doing now. I do not
by edw519 17y ago
Hi pgbovine. Thanks for your post and thanks for your visit here to the discussion. I sure wish more authors would engage us like you are doing now.
I do not think your article is utter trash, I just disagree with much of it. I was one of the first to pounce on it with my other post in this thread, which I have since editted to show you the respect you deserve even though I still fundamentally disagree with your premise.
A few additional thoughts:
No one is "just a geek". We are all very complex beings with lots of other ways to describe us. Following a list of "rules for geeks" drops us to an unnecessary lowest common denominator.
Sometimes, the only difference between "surviving this social function" and "learning something in the next hour that may change my life" is mindset. A postive mindset is often best achieved by ignoring many of your rules.
Nothing is mandatory. No one really has to do anything they don't want or go anywhere they don't want (with a few obvious exceptions). It's a stupid waste of everyone's time to go somewhere you don't want and then, to make matters worse, not be yourself.
No one should mask themselves or adopt alternate personas. You only get one life so that's the one you should live.
I suppose one of the reasons I feel as strongly as I do is because I was once an isolated geek who adhered to many of your rules. Once I stopped doing that and just allowed myself to be myself, social situations didn't seem that much different from engineering problems and now I'm equally comfortable with either. I have a feeling I'm not the only one.
- pgbovine 17y agothanks for the compliments! it's good to see people on HN reading my articles, because the meta-level thing i'm learning about my own writing style is that many of my articles take on one extreme and over-simplified POV and just run with it. for instance, in this one, i take on the POV that there is a sharp divide between geeks and non-geeks, which as you pointed out, is far from true in real life. my other articles take on a similarly 1-D POV, mostly because it makes the writing process simpler ;) i find it pretty difficult to weave in all the subtleties of real-life into a page-long online article; it would just sound like a lot of "not wanting to step on anyone's toes". i suppose in the end it all comes down to whether readers agree with my (over-simplified) premise or not --- if so, then the tips somewhat make sense. if not, then there's no point in reading further :)
- pgbovine 17y agoactually, you gave me a good idea that i might incorporate into future articles. maybe i should always start with a "Premise" line, which would be something like a hokey version of software preconditions.